“Presence” is well known in the telecommunications industry. Presence and presence information relate to a person having multiple devices with multiple communication paths and a user's preference or preferred device of availability. “Presence information” typically refers to any information associated with a network node and/or endpoint device, such as a communications device, that is in turn typically associated with a person or entity. Examples of presence information include registration information under the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), information regarding the accessibility of the endpoint device, the endpoint(s) telephone number or address, the recency of use of the endpoint device by the person, recency of authentication by the person to a network component, and the preferences of the user, such as contact mode preferences or profiles, such as the communication device to be contacted for specific types of contacts or under specific actual scenarios or presence contacts, contact time preferences, impermissible contact types and/or subjects, such as the subjects about which the person does not wish to be contacted, parties who must not be contacted, i.e., a do not call if you are not calling on behalf of a specific person or entity, and parties who can contact at any time, e.g., “I will accept a call from the head of the company regardless of what I am doing.”
Typically, the presence information is communicated and updated via one or more SIP-based messages exchanged, for example, between one or more endpoints and/or one or more application servers.
Presence information can be user configurable, i.e., the user can configure the number and type of communication and message devices (endpoints) with which they can be contacted and define profiles that govern the communication and message options presented to the incoming contact or in specified factual situations or sets of facts. By identifying a pre-defined set of facts, a profile can be accessed and followed to direct the contact to the user/preferred device.